Startled carriage horse goes on Central Park run

NEW YORK (AP) - A startled carriage horse took a jaunt around Central Park without any passengers or its driver.

The horse became detached from its bridle on Monday evening and ran into the Manhattan park, following its usual route, the union that represents carriage drivers said. It was unclear what startled it.

It looped back around to basically where it had started and exited the park at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, near The Plaza hotel, where a group of carriage drivers was waiting to corral it. Its carriage got caught on an open taxi door, and it came to a stop.

There were no injuries to the horse or to any people, carriage driver and industry spokesman Stephen Malone said.

Advocacy agency NYCLASS, which is seeking to end the carriage horse industry, released a statement saying carriage horses and city streets don't mix.

"It's time to retire the carriage horses and replace them with something that doesn't spook or dart dangerously through traffic and pedestrians," it said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to ban the horse-drawn carriages and replace them with vintage-looking electric cars. But he may not have enough votes in the City Council to pass a law.

Comments

Hey its historic it was here before any one of us (including the mayor of new york) and its historic if he and every-one gets rid of this they will be taken history out of the book and putting it into the history book and then the jobs will go down the shitter and I bet no one wants that right. And LOOK I grow up around horses and they only get scared when something that hits them in the back and makes them jump like what happen in this article so it was not the horses or there care takers fault but the person who did not let the driver or the horse know what was going on.

Although I can't really decipher what you're babbling about...No horse on planet earth should ever be forced to have it's face in traffic exhaust carting around a bunch of fat asses that are too lazy to walk or ride a bike. NY, Chicago, I don't care where. I couldn't care less about the drivers that will have to go out and get real jobs.

Frankly, this polluted, privatized, overcrowded city is much less than ideal for HUMAN habitation and transportation, let alone that of horses. If not for our economic obligations, I imagine many of us would prefer to steer clear of the carcinogenic fumes, cramped quarters, deafening, obnoxious car horns, litter and feces-smeared concrete jungle.

Unfortunately, as long as capitalism is king in this anthropocentric world, people will be more than willing to sacrifice their own health and well-being as well as the health of other beings to 'get ahead'. The horses are merely a sentinel indicating the risks of our own exposure, both physical and psychological. From the banker's business to the taxi driver's carriage, perhaps we too could all free ourselves from our bridles for but a moment to experience a sliver of pseudo-freedom. As money gets tighter than the time and space we live in, we're no longer free to roam. This is the culture we have chosen. Aren't you appalled?

the four hundred jobs can transition to the new quaint and fun electric versions or drive taxi's.. NYC needs at least that many more taxi's Cruel cruel the limping and the gait on these animals and the misery in their eyes and faces tell the pain and torture. what's the good in coming back to a supposedly decent stable if your knees, legs ankles hips and even their bloated stomachs are all in PAIN??? end this torture even the vehicle fumes they breathe all day is torture not to mention the deafening traffic noise it's disgusting these poor animals are tortured

Why don't they have the horses stay in the park and not on the streets where these problems acure. They could have a stable in the park it's. This way it'd be much safer for everyone including the horses...